Adopt-a-blog #21 – Valleywag.com

I
have to admit when i first heard i had to review a blog on Silicon
Valley news it didn't fill me with a huge amount of excitement. I had
never visited the site and I thought 'here we go again' another site
filled with news on the latest movers and shakers in the IT world, the
next Google or Facebook, a few mobile phone product reviews and who the
latest CEO of Yahoo is – that sort of thing.

Well it is more or
less but with sections like 'Jerk' and 'Valley Spawn' its Heat
Magazine's version of events in Silicon Valley. I have to admit that
every now and then i find my wifes copy of Heat magazine lying on the
kitchen table and while i enjoy slagging it off its difficult to put it
down.

Like any tabloid they don'tholdback and it makes for some interesting reading. The companies overview is..

'You people in Silicon Valley are
far too busy changing the world to care about sex, greed and hypocrisy.
So you won't want to read a tech gossip rag like Valleywag.'

The site was launched in February 2006 and in its very first post it outed the fact that Google founder Larry Page and high-ranking employee Marissa Mayer
had dated for months. It was also responsible for the leaking of the
Gene Simmons sex tape and that famous story (viewed over 680,000 times)
about the bank intern whose excuse for missing work was discovered by
his boss on Facebook. I imagine there are now hundreds of similar stories.

I
guess like any source of gossip news they have been guilty of reporting
on unsubstantiated gossip and they have made several high-profile
mistakes. Former Editor Nick Denton twice misreported the identity of
the author of the Fake Steve Jobs blog. They also falsely reported that a drunk employee caused a major power outage at data center 365 Main by relying on the gossip of an unidentified source.

When you're constantly exposed to technology Valleywag makes for some light relief and a good chuckle.